N-way doherty distributed power amplifier with power tracking

ABSTRACT

A power amplifier using N-way Doherty structure with adaptive bias supply power tracking for extending the efficiency region over the high peak-to-average power ratio of the multiplexing modulated signals such as wideband code division multiple access and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is disclosed. In an embodiment, present invention uses a dual-feed distributed structure to an N-way Doherty amplifier to improve the isolation between at least one main amplifier and at least one peaking amplifier and, and also to improve both gain and efficiency performance at high output back-off power. Hybrid couplers can be used at either or both of the input and output. In at least some implementations, circuit space is also conserved due to the integration of amplification, power splitting and combining.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/087,682, filed Nov. 22, 2013, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,184,703, issued Nov. 11, 2015, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/553,967, filed Jul. 20, 2012, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,618,883, issued Dec. 31, 2013, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/603,419, filed Oct. 21, 2009, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,274,332, issued Sep. 25, 2012, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/108,507, filed Apr. 23, 2008, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,688,135, issued Mar. 30, 2010, which claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/925,577, filed Apr. 23, 2007. Each of these applications is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention generally relates to high power communication systems. More specially, the present invention relates to high efficiency high power amplifiers for such systems.

BACKGROUND

In modern digital wireless communication systems, such as IS-95, PCS, WCDMA, OFDM, and so on, the power amplifiers have advanced towards having a wide bandwidth and large number of carriers. Recently, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation has become an attractive technique for transmitting information efficiently within a limited bandwidth like WiBRO and WiMAX. However, since the OFDM signal consists of a number of independently modulated sub-carriers, it produces a higher peak-to-average power ratio (PAR) signal. A typical PAR for a 64-subcarrier OFDM signal is around 8-13 dB. When the number of sub-carriers is increased to 2048, the PAR also increases, typically from 11 to 16 dB. The power amplifiers designed to operate with these high PARs typically have significantly deteriorated efficiency.

The Doherty amplifier is known as a technique for improving the efficiency at high output back-off power. Its primary advantage is the ease of configuration when applied to high power amplifiers, unlike other efficiency enhancement amplifiers or techniques such as switching mode amplifiers, EER, LINC and so on. Recent results have been reported on its use as: a symmetric Doherty structure, an asymmetric Doherty structure with uneven power transistors, and an N-way Doherty structure using multi-paralleled transistors. In the case of the symmetric Doherty amplifier, the maximum efficiency point is obtained at 6 dB back-off power.

The asymmetric Doherty amplifier can obtain a high efficiency at various back-off powers using a combination of different power device sizes for the main and peaking amplifiers. Unfortunately, it is difficult to optimize the gain and output power of the asymmetric Doherty amplifier because of the different device matching circuits and the delay mismatch between the main amplifier and the peaking amplifier.

The conventional N-way Doherty amplifier gains an efficiency enhancement over a conventional 2-way Doherty structure by using the multiple parallel transistors of identical devices. Its one drawback is that the total gain will be reduced due to the loss of the N-way input power splitter. Under low gain situations this will increase the power dissipation of the driving amplifier.

Further, while the conventional N-way Doherty amplifier can offer improved efficiency at high output back-off power, the performance of conventional N-way Doherty amplifiers deteriorates as to both gain and efficiency for higher peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) signals.

Hence, a need remains in the art for a method of applying both circuit-level and system-level techniques simultaneously for improving the gain and efficiency performance of N-way Doherty amplifier at high output back-off power in the high power communication systems.

BRIEF SUMMARY

Accordingly, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for improving the gain and efficiency performance of the Doherty amplifying structure at high output back-off power for high power communication system applications. To achieve the above objects, according to the present invention, the technique employs dual-feed distributed amplifying. The power splitter and combiner of the conventional N-way Doherty amplifier are replaced by hybrid couplers with transmission lines. Compared to the conventional N-way Doherty amplifier, the present invention is able to achieve good isolation at the input and output as well as high gain performance with high efficiency. In an embodiment, a power tracking adaptive bias supply technique is employed. The drain bias voltages and gate bias voltages are adaptively controlled by the input power level. Two alternative approaches as disclosed: 1) Envelope tracking and 2) Average power tracking. The envelope tracking technique requires a fast switching power supply whereas the average power tracking technique adapts significantly slower. The power detection circuit can be implemented either using analog circuitry or using digital signal processing.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Further objects and advantages of the invention can be more fully understood from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is schematic diagram showing an embodiment of an N-way Doherty amplifier using a dual-feed distributed (DFD) method in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a graph showing efficiency characteristics of an N-way Doherty dual-feed distributed amplifier at various levels of output back-off power with analog adaptive power tracking in accordance with the invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier with digital adaptive power tracking in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a graph showing simulation results of gain and power added efficiency performance (PAE) of an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a graph showing measurement results of gain and power added efficiency performance (PAE) of an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a graph showing measurement results of gain and PAE performance variation as a function of the shunt capacitor and bias voltage of peaking amplifiers for a single-tone signal using an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a graph showing measurement results of spectrum for a single WCDMA carrier using the 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier of the present invention;

FIG. 8 shows a hybrid mode power amplifier system in accordance with the invention;

FIG. 9 shows an adaptive power tracking system based on digital signal processing;

FIG. 10 shows an adaptive power tracking technique based on analog power tracking;

FIG. 11 shows an embodiment of an analog adaptive power tracking circuit;

FIG. 12 shows an embodiment of a digital power tracking algorithm;

FIG. 13 depicts an embodiment of an envelope tracking algorithm;

FIG. 14 is a schematic diagram showing an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier with a hybrid coupler at the output in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In general, the present invention, involves the use of a single-ended dual-feed distributed (SEDFD) amplifying method with an N-way Doherty amplifier structure, so as to achieve high gain and high efficiency performances at high output back-off power. In some embodiments, the gain and efficiency performance is also maximized by adjusting the gate bias of N-way peaking amplifiers and shunt capacitors at the end of the half-wave length gate and drain lines, respectively. Compared to conventional N-way Doherty amplifiers, therefore, the present invention achieves higher power added efficiency (PAE) and higher gain for the multiplexing modulated signals. The method and apparatus provided by the present invention is therefore referred as an N-way Doherty Distributed Power Amplifier (NWDPA) hereafter. Various embodiments of the NWDPA according to the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing an N-way Doherty amplifier using the SEDFD method of the present invention. The RF input signal 101 is provided as an input to main SEDFD amplifier 108 and peaking SEDFD amplifier 107 by means of a power splitter 102. Each SEDFD amplifier consists of two transmission lines 109, 110, 111, 112 and N multiple transistors 113, 114. All transistors 113, 114 in the SEDFD main amplifier 107 and peaking amplifier 108 are connected by both gate and drain lines 109, 110, 111, 112 with a half-wave length at the center frequency and operate identically. The input signal of the SEDFD amplifier 107, 108 is distributed along the gate line 109, 111 and the amplified output signal is combined along the drain line 110, 112. Since each transistor adds power in phase to the signal, the SEDFD amplifier 107, 108 is able to provide higher gain. A λ/4 microstrip line 103 is prior to the SEDFD peaking amplifier 107 in order to synchronize the phases between the SEDFD main amplifier 108 and the SEDFD peaking amplifier 107. The output signal 106 of the SEDFD main amplifier 108 is passed through a microstrip λ/4 impedance transformer 104 and combined with the output signal of the SEDFD peaking amplifier 107 by the power combiner 105.

FIG. 2 is a graph showing efficiency characteristics of an NWDPA at various output back-off power. The efficiency of the NWDPA for the maximum power level is given by

${n = \frac{\pi}{4}},$ and the efficiency for the medium power level is given by

$n = {\frac{\pi}{4}\frac{\left( {\frac{P}{M} + 1} \right) \cdot \left( \frac{v_{o}}{v_{\max}} \right)^{2}}{{\left( {\frac{P}{M} + 2} \right) \cdot \left( \frac{v_{o}}{v_{\max}} \right)} - 1}}$ where v_(o) and v_(max), are the output voltage and the maximum output voltage, respectively, M is the number of transistors for the main amplifier, and P the number of transistors for the peaking amplifier. Depending upon the embodiment, the main and peaking amplifiers can be either single transistors or multiple transistors, or other forms of amplifiers. In addition, the transistors can be discrete or integrated, again depending upon the embodiment.

For the low power level, the efficiency of the NWDPA is expressed as

$n = {\frac{\pi}{4} \cdot \left( {\frac{P}{M} + 1} \right) \cdot {\frac{v_{o}}{v_{\max}}.}}$

The efficiency of the amplifier for various levels of output back-off power is calculated as a function of the number of the main and peaking amplifiers. The relationship between the extended back-off state X_(BO) and the number of main and peaking amplifiers is given by

$X_{B\; O} = {20\mspace{14mu}{{\log_{10}\left( {\frac{P}{M} + 1} \right)}.}}$

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing an embodiment of a 3-way Doherty SEDFD amplifier of the present invention. In order to provide high efficiency at a back-off power of 9.5 dB, the amplifier consists of one main amplifier 203 and two peaking amplifiers 204, 205 using the same type of transistors. The RF input signal 201 is passed through a 90° hybrid coupler 202 and divided to a main amplifier 203 and two peaking amplifiers 204, 205. Input impedance matching circuits 206, 207, 208 are connected between the coupler 202 and the main amplifier 203 and the peaking amplifiers 204, 205, respectively. In at least some embodiments, the main amplifier 203 is biased as a Class-AB amplifier and the peaking amplifiers 204, 205 biased as Class-C amplifiers. If the main amplifier 203 is generally biased in Class AB mode, it will have a gain compression characteristic. In contrast, if the peaking amplifier 204, 205 is generally biased in Class C mode, it will have a gain expansion characteristic. In at least some embodiments, the present invention takes advantage of the complimentary characteristics, so that the gain compression of the Class AB main amplifier will be compensated by the gain expansion of the Class C peaking amplifiers to create a more linear power amplifier.

In order to achieve optimized power, output impedance matching circuits 209, 210, 211 are connected to the outputs of the main amplifier 203 and the peaking amplifiers 204, 205. A shunt capacitor CM 212 is connected to the output impedance matching circuit 209 of the main amplifier 203 so as to optimize the linearity of the NWDPA based on the linearity optimized Doherty amplifier method of U.S. provisional application No. 60/846,905 filed on November 2006, incorporated herein by reference. To obtain peak efficiency point at a desired output back-off power, compensation lines 213 are inserted between output impedance matching circuits 209, 210, 211 and λ/4 impedance transformers 214, 215. The peaking amplifiers 204, 205 are combined using the dual-feed distributed structure which has, in some embodiments, half-wave micro-strip lines 217, 218 at each gate and drain of the first peaking amplifier, shown as a FET for purposes of illustration and clarity. In FIG. 3, the first peaking amplifier 204 is combined with the second peaking amplifier 205 using a dual-feed distributed structure. The dual-feed distributed structure comprises the half wavelength and quarter wavelength lines and short-circuited quarter-wave length micro-strip lines 219, 220 at each gate and drain of the second peaking amplifier 205, respectively, connected through the associated input and output impedance matching circuits. The second peaking amplifier 205 is shown in the illustrated embodiment as a single transistor for purposes of simplicity, but could be one or more transistors. The quarter wavelength transmission lines 214, 215 at the output could in some embodiments be replaced by a hybrid coupler 224. FIG. 14 shows the quarter wavelength transmission lines 214, 215 replaced by the hybrid coupler 224.

The half-wave lines 217 and 218 are, in some embodiments, set at the center frequency of the operating power amplifier bandwidth. Shunt capacitors C_(P) 221, 222 are connected in some embodiments to both ends of the short-circuited quarter-wave length micro-strip lines 219, 220 for optimizing both gain and efficiency characteristics of the NWDPA. Offset line 213 can be included to prevent leakage power between the main amplifier 203 and the peaking amplifiers 204, 205. In some embodiments, the hybrid coupler 202 will cause some gain compression, and this can be compensated by the gain expansion of the peaking amplifiers 204, 205. An additional hybrid coupler can be connected at the output in some embodiments. Further, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the main distributed amplifiers and peaking distributed amplifiers can be constructed either as separate miniature microwave integrated circuits or on one integrated MMIC.

An embodiment of an analog power tracking system in accordance with the invention is shown in FIG. 10 and comprises two primary blocks: power detection circuitry 234 and Adaptive Bias Supply Circuit 233, together with the N-way Doherty Amplifier of FIG. 3. For simplicity and clarity, like elements from FIG. 3 are shown with like reference numerals in FIG. 10. A directional coupler 232 is typically used at the input of the N-Way Doherty power amplifier. The directional coupler 232 extracts a sampling of the input signal. The output of the Adaptive Bias Supply Circuit 233 is fed to the various gate and drain voltage terminals via an RF choke. The RF choke serves to supply DC bias to the active devices while not altering the RF performance. One possible embodiment of the power detection circuit 234 is shown in FIG. 11 and comprises an attenuator 1100, logarithmic detector 1105, rectifier 1110 including capacitor 1115 and resistor 1120, and operational amplifiers 1125 and 1130. The value of the capacitor 1115 in the rectifier circuit implementation of FIG. 11 controls the averaging time constant. By setting this time constant much faster than the incoming modulation, the circuit of FIG. 11 performs envelope tracking By setting this time constant much slower than the incoming modulation, the circuit of FIG. 11 performs average power tracking.

The digital power tracking system in FIG. 9 comprises baseband digital signal processing using DSP 230—to extract either the envelope or the average power of the incoming signal—as well as an adaptive bias supply circuit 231. The input signal modulation is accessible at baseband using digital signal processing. Therefore, a power detection algorithm can be easily developed at baseband. The output of the DSP power detection algorithm is fed to a Digital to Analog converter (not shown) which feeds the Adaptive Bias Supply circuit 231. FIG. 12 shows an embodiment of the average power tracking algorithm based on a digital signal processing implementation, and comprises a square law function 1200 followed by a low pass filter function 1210 and an averaging of the function X; from 1 to N, as shown, at 1220. The value of N controls the time window for averaging the input power. FIG. 13 depicts an embodiment of an envelope tracking algorithm. The magnitude 1300 of the incoming modulation is processed and followed by a low pass filter 1310. No averaging occurs in this implementation.

In examining the performance of NWDPA, a 42 dBm high power amplifier is designed and implemented by using LDMOS FET's with pldB of 150 W.

FIG. 4 is a graph showing simulation results of gain and PAE for a single tone signal at the frequency of 2140 MHz using a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier such as shown in FIG. 3. The operating point of the Class AB biased main amplifier is: I_(DQ)=510 mA, V_(GS)=3.82 V and V_(DS)=27 V. The operating points of the Class C biased peaking amplifiers are: 1) Peaking amplifier 1; I_(DQ)=0 mA, V_(GS)=2.4 V and V_(DS)=27 V, 2) Peaking amplifier 2; I_(DQ)=0 mA, V_(GS)=2.6 V and V_(DS)=27 V. The output impedance of the combined peaking amplifier using a dual-feed distributed structure is 4.65+j2.1Ω. An offset line of approximately 0.25λ, was inserted; this corresponds to an optimum output resistance of 521Ω. From the simulated results, 43% PAE was obtained at a peak envelope power (PEP) of around 200 W. Consequently, a 40% PAE at 9.5 dB back-off power from the peak efficiency point was achieved. This was an efficiency improvement of approximately 7% in comparison to that of the 2-way conventional Doherty amplifier at a 6 dB peaking point, also shown in FIG. 4. A gain of approximately 10.5 dB was obtained from 2130 to 2150 MHz.

FIG. 5 is a graph showing measurement results of gain and PAE of the 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier of the present invention. The main amplifier's operating point is: I_(DQ)=480 mA, V_(GS)=3.9 V. The operating points of the peaking amplifiers are: 1) Peaking amplifier 1; I_(DQ)=0 mA, V_(G)s=2.1 V, 2) Peaking amplifier 2; I_(DQ)=0 mA, V_(G)s=1.9 V. The shunt capacitors, C_(P) and C_(M), of 15 pF and 0.5 pF are used, respectively. A 42.7% PAE at PEP of 131 W and 39.5% PAE at 9.5 dB back off are achieved, respectively. A gain of approximately 11 dB was obtained at 9.5 dB back off.

FIG. 6 is a graph showing measurement results of gain and PAE performance variation as a function of the shunt capacitor and bias voltage of peaking amplifiers for single-tone signal using the 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier of the present invention. Optimization of C_(P) and the bias point of the two-peaking amplifiers produced efficiency and gain improvement of approximately 8% and 2 dB at 9.5 dB back off, even though the PAE is reduced at PEP.

FIG. 7 is a graph showing measurement results of spectrum for a single WCDMA carrier using a 3-way Doherty distributed amplifier in accordance with the present invention. The operating points were V_(GS)=3.79 V (Main PA), V_(GS)=3.1 V (Peaking PA1) and V_(GS)=2.5V (Peaking PA2), respectively. The shunt capacitors, C_(P) and C_(M) of 9.1 pF and 0.5 pF were used, respectively. In order to achieve high linearity, both memoryless and memory-based digital predistortion were applied. The ACLR performances of −51 dBc after memoryless and −54 dBc after memory compensation were obtained at 41 dBm output power and +2.5 MHz offset frequency.

In summary, the NWDPA of the present invention, compared to the conventional N-way Doherty amplifier, improves the gain performance more effectively since the NWDPA uses a SEDFD structure in conjunction with a Doherty amplifier. A hybrid mode power amplifier system in accordance with the invention is shown in FIG. 8, in which a modulated RF input signal 800 is provided to a digital predistortion controller 805, which in turn provides its output to a power amplifier 810 in accordance with the present invention. The RF output 815 is monitored, and a signal representative of the output is fed back to the controller 805 as a feedback signal 820.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiments, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the details described thereof. Various substitutions and modifications are disclosed in the foregoing description, and others will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art based on the teachings herein. Therefore, all such substitutions and modifications are intended to be embraced within the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. An amplifier device comprising: an input circuit having a radiofrequency input configured to receive a radiofrequency signal for amplification, the input circuit including a hybrid coupler, a first output, and a second output; a main amplification circuit having a main input coupled to the first output of the input circuit, the main amplification circuit having a main output; a first peaking amplification circuit having a first peaking input coupled to the second output of the input circuit, the first peaking amplification circuit having a first peaking output; a second peaking amplification circuit having a second peaking input coupled to the first peaking input of the first peaking amplification circuit via a first half-wave transmission line, the second peaking amplification circuit having a second peaking output coupled to the first peaking output via a second half-wave transmission line; an output circuit having a third input coupled to the main output of the main amplification circuit and a fourth input coupled to the first peaking output of the first peaking amplification circuit, the output circuit having a radiofrequency output providing an amplified radiofrequency signal, wherein the output circuit includes: an offset line coupled to each of the third input and the fourth input of the output circuit; and a second hybrid coupler coupled to the third input and the fourth input of the output circuit and the radiofrequency output of the output circuit.
 2. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the main amplification circuit includes a first input impedance matching circuit.
 3. The amplifier device of claim 2, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a second input impedance matching circuit.
 4. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the main amplification circuit includes a first output impedance matching circuit and wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a second output impedance matching circuit.
 5. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the output circuit includes: the offset line coupled to each of the third input and the fourth input of the output circuit; and impedance transformers coupled to the offset line and the radiofrequency output of the output circuit.
 6. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the main amplification circuit includes a main amplifier, and wherein the main amplifier is biased as a Class AB amplifier.
 7. The amplifier device of claim 6, wherein the main amplifier comprises at least one transistor.
 8. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a peaking amplifier, and wherein the peaking amplifier is biased as a Class C amplifier.
 9. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit comprises at least one transistor.
 10. The amplifier device of claim 1, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a dual-feed distributed structure.
 11. The amplifier device of claim 1, further comprising: a first shunt capacitor coupled to the second peaking input of the second peaking amplification circuit; and a second shunt capacitor coupled to the second peaking output of the second peaking amplification circuit.
 12. The amplifier device of claim 11, wherein the first shunt capacitor is coupled to the second peaking input of the second peaking amplification circuit via a first quarter-wave transmission line, and wherein the second shunt capacitor is coupled to the second peaking output of the second peaking amplification circuit via a second quarter-wave transmission line.
 13. A method for amplifying a radiofrequency signal, comprising: producing, using an input circuit including a hybrid coupler, a first output and a second output, the input circuit having an input configured to receive the radiofrequency signal; amplifying, using a main amplification circuit, the first output of the input circuit, the main amplification circuit having a main output providing a main amplified signal; amplifying, using a first peaking amplification circuit and a second peaking amplification circuit, the second output of the input circuit, the first peaking amplification circuit having a first peaking input coupled to a second peaking input of the second peaking amplification circuit via a first half-wave transmission line, the first peaking amplification circuit having a first peaking output providing a first peaking amplified signal, the second peaking amplification circuit having a second peaking output coupled to the first peaking output of the first peaking amplification circuit via a second half-wave transmission line and providing a second peaking amplified signal; and combining, using an output circuit, the main amplified signal, the first peaking amplified signal, and the second peaking amplified signal, wherein the output circuit drives each of the main amplified signal, the first peaking amplified signal, and the second peaking amplified signal through an offset line, wherein the output circuit combines an offset line output using a second hybrid coupler, wherein the second hybrid coupler produces a coupled output associated with the output circuit, wherein the coupled output associated with the output circuit provides an amplified radiofrequency output signal.
 14. The method of claim 13, further comprising: impedance matching, using a first input impedance matching circuit, the first output of the input circuit; and impedance matching, using a second input impedance matching circuit, the second output of the input circuit.
 15. The method of claim 13, further comprising: impedance matching, using a first output impedance matching circuit, the main output of the main amplification circuit to produce the main amplified signal; and impedance matching, using a second output impedance matching circuit, the first peaking output of the first peaking amplification circuit to produce the first peaking amplified signal.
 16. The method of claim 13, wherein combining the main amplified signal and the first peaking amplified signal includes: driving each of the main amplified signal and the first peaking amplified signal through the offset line of the output circuit; and combining the offset line output using impedance transformers, the impedance transformers producing the coupled output of the output circuit.
 17. The method of claim 13, wherein the main amplification circuit includes a main amplifier, and wherein the main amplifier is biased as a Class AB amplifier.
 18. The method of claim 13, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a peaking amplifier, and wherein the peaking amplifier is biased as a Class C amplifier.
 19. The method of claim 13, wherein the first peaking amplification circuit includes a dual-feed distributed structure. 